In this day and age, we are lucky enough to have the technologies we do, to make running our businesses easier. Sometimes just a simple pen and paper will suffice just perfectly. But today we’re going to talk about the apps I use to make my life easier when it comes to running MY businesses.
Google Calendar
This is an app that should be in everyone’s arsenal if it’s not already. There’s nothing like a good calendar app, and Google has figured out how to perfect the digital calendar. From scheduling your events, your next video call, and inserting your Zoom details natively, Google Calendar does just about everything you can think of when it comes to managing your day-to-day life. I use this daily to let me know what my schedule is for the day.
GSuite
I think this goes without saying, Google’s Drive suite is a part of everyone’s tech stack. Their collaboration features within Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms are unmatched when it comes to managing your documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms.
I use this almost daily when it comes to running my business, whether it’s throwing together a quick spreadsheet to calculate some estimates or typing up a new blog. Google drive is a highly recommended tool, especially for those not already using it. Not to mention it also comes with your mailbox integrated powered by Gmail.
Dropbox
You can’t mention the next without mentioning the last, and for the next app, we have Dropbox. My digital filing cabinet for everything. I store my whole life in Dropbox from personal documents, work stuff, to colorings from my kids. I love Dropbox and its simplicity. I’ve been using it for almost 10 years now and unless they go away completely I don’t see myself ever replacing it.
They’ve figured out the Sync feature to perfection. If you’re someone that loves working out of the cloud, I suggest giving their Dropbox Sync feature a spin if you haven’t already. It’s game-changing!
ClickUp
The tool that single-handedly takes my productivity to the next level is ClickUp. The project management software aims to be “the one app to replace them all.” Unfortunately, that’s not the case because it still can’t send invoices or proposals but other than that it can pretty be used to run every other aspect of your business. I had previously used Asana up until a couple of years ago when ClickUp came onto the scene, and I haven’t looked back since making that switch. Within it, you can manage your to-do lists, project management, docs & wikis, spreadsheets, email, events, reminders, goal tracking, time tracking, screenshots & recording, resource management, chat & more. Let’s just say this is my secret weapon to stay ahead of everything.
Evernote
This next one has been around for a long time and does a lot. It might not have all the bells and whistles of the newer apps from today, but it just gets the job done if you can get yourself in the habit of using it. Evernote is a huge time saver and a great productivity tool. I store all my receipts, manuals, ideas & almost everything else that doesn’t make it into Dropbox.
One of the coolest things about Evernote is that you can sync your data across all devices and take your notes everywhere you go. So the next time you are having coffee with a friend or hopping on the bus when inspiration comes, you can just write it down or record it with Evernote.
Calendly
Goodbye, are the days where there would be numerous emails back and forth trying to schedule the perfect meeting time for everyone attending. In comes Calendly, an app that gives an inside look at your calendar without publicizing your events. Giving them access to book some time into your calendar for external or internal meetings. Once you give them access to the app to see what is available in your agenda, they select the type of meeting, whether it be a phone call or video conference. All you have to do is send your calendly link to them and the reset is automated into your CRM.
Adobe Creative Cloud
As a graphic & web designer, Adobe CC is vital to my daily operations. Whether it be creating vector graphics in Illustrator, touching up some compositions in Photoshop, or building a prototype in Adobe XD. The possibilities are endless when creating using the Adobe Creative Cloud. It may seem on the more expensive side at first glance, but delve into it a little and you’ll realize just how much is on offer through their packages. When it comes to creative apps Adobe is the undisputed champion in the room. Any asset you upload to the cloud will be accessible from whichever computer, tablet, or phone you’re working on. You can have shared libraries that other users can access and contribute to, and the motion graphic templates from Premiere Pro and After Effects can be stored there as well.
You get a lot for your money with Adobe Creative Cloud, from online storage to collaborative features, and of course all the apps you could want to generate content. The combined weight of all this, plus the fact Adobe regularly updates all of its apps, means you might see immense value in this subscription option, and to seal the deal, they offer you a free 7-day trial, so you have nothing to lose by checking it out.
BetterProposals
Ever since switching to BP our signature conversion rate has skyrocketed! I don’t advise doing any business without a proposal and contract in place. Better Proposals is online proposal software that enables you to create attention-grabbing proposals and contracts with the help of an easy-to-use editor and a library of templates. Through this platform, you can design proposals that can be viewed on any device and convert first impressions into sales. To keep you updated, Better Proposals sends notifications for when your clients and prospects have viewed your proposals, which can help you determine when you should follow up. It also provides reports on who might be ready to sign and who needs a little more incentive to close the deal. Better Proposals enables you to offer your services quickly and beautifully through a detailed pricing table that you can populate with your products and services. You can also use this platform to address customer inquiries, track your sales process, and collect payments.
Wave
After getting our clients to sign on the dotted line though BetterProposals, we then have our automated system email over a copy of their invoice directly to their email address on file. That’s where Wave comes into play! It’s our bookkeeping software of choice. And the best part about it is that it’s FREE to use! Of course, it comes with the standard 2.9% processing fee like every other payment processing method around at the moment. But other than that Wave is just perfect for me. It allows me to keep track of my business’s finances, send invoices, recurring payments, receipts, and every other bookkeeping feature you’d need.
Hubspot
As my #1 pick for CRM software, Hubspot, takes the prize for multiple reasons; one being that it comes with a free version that outshines most paid CRMs on the market, and you can use it across your marketing, customer service, and sales teams. It’s a great option for just about every business out there. Hubspot consistently wins for my #1 spot against other CRM tools on the market.
Both the free and paid version of HubSpot is incredibly easy to use. This is particularly important for those using the free plan with no in-house tech support, as there is no customer support included. However, users of the free plan have access to an extensive online knowledge base, which we’ll touch on shortly. At the end of the day, it is a free version! But, you must consider the limitations of the free plan compared to the higher-tiered options. For example, on the free plan, you’ll only have access to 200 email tracking notifications per month, compared to the Starter plan having unlimited. Some of the limitations may not matter to you, and some may be deal-breaker. At the end of the day, the limitations that matter is the ones that are going to impact your business negatively.
If you’re not familiar with what a CRM is, basically it’s where you store all customer-related information for future campaigns, reference, and management. Make sure when you’re checking out your CRM’s to give Hubspot a spin.
Slack
For all team and client communications, I use Slack! Slack is a group messaging collaboration tool that aims to simplify communication for businesses. Features include open discussions, private groups, and direct messaging, as well as contextual search and messaging archiving and file sharing. Slack integrates with several other tools, such as ClickUp, Dropbox, Google Drive, Mailchimp, and more. Slack was acquired by Salesforce in December but ever since there have only been positives to come from it. It’s a great place to share ideas, interact with co-workers remotely, schedule meetings, generate solutions, better planning of work activities, and having everyone work as one remote team.
The communication channels have an excellent notification system. Notifications in Slack are one of the things that can make it a very beneficial software because I can be attentive to any movement of the chat channels, also, I can know when I am being mentioned within any of the channels. Slack is very adaptable, and appropriate software for small, medium, and large companies.
Local by Flywheel
Local test sites just work when it comes to WordPress development. They enable you to test new features, plugins, and themes without the fear of breaking anything. The even better part is if you do feel like you messed something up, you can fire up a fresh new test site within seconds. Their only downside is that they integrate with Flywheel for their advertised 1-Click Installs of newly built sites from Local to your server. With a migration tool of your choice, you can accomplish this without having to bring in Flywheel into your expenses. This tool makes local WordPress development a breeze, and best of all, it’s free. There is a paid plan, that offers other features such as; live links, instant reload, link checker, MagicSync, priority support & more.
Spark
Inbox Zero is one of the things most preached about in the productivity inter-streets. In short, Inbox Zero is a productivity philosophy about dealing with a constant, life-long stream of email. How I deal with that stream of emails and accomplish Inbox Zero is with Spark, my email client of choice. I use Spark on both my computer and phone. It makes managing your email a breeze. Especially if you’re someone that manages multiple inboxes, it’s a good way to fly through them all, organize away all the ones that need to be organized, and archive the rest. Their swipe functions make for an even quicker way of accomplishing this when doing so from your phone. Spark is completely free and comes jam-packed full of features. Spark is the best personal email client and a revolutionary email for teams. You will love your email again!
Zoom
Pre-pandemic Zoom was a part of my daily routine, fast-forward a couple of years and I’m using it even more and with less friction from clients or co-workers. I’m sure by now everyone is pretty familiar with what it does. It might have come with its security flaws in the past. But it didn’t rely deter the usage as it’s the most reliable option on the market, with the smallest learning curve. Yes, you do have to download an app to your device before being able to join the meeting, but once that’s complete joining meetings becomes a breeze and now you’re easily more collaborative. Yes, there’s always that redundant run-on meeting that you can’t figure out why you’re on. But with the proper meeting agenda (I plan mine out in ClickUp), you can combat those types of meetings as much as possible.
Sideline
Sideline is a suite of pro texting tools for the future of work. It upgrades your phone with communication tools that help professionals thrive—even in the face of unprecedented challenges. It helps turn your phone into a personal device, and work device. Sideline’s suite of features lets you protect your privacy, create a professional identity, prioritize calls, connect with customers, add team members, and get more done. It’s a great way to also be able to separate work from your personal life, as you can make yourself unavailable on Sideline when you’re out of the office to forward calls to voicemail, a great feature for your sanity’s sake.
HeadSpace
That leads to my next app for productivity purposes, Headspace. One that helps promote better mental health, through guided meditations. Headspace is your guide to mindfulness and clarity for your everyday life. Learn meditation and mindfulness skills from world-class experts like a former monk and Headspace co-founder Andy Puddicombe. In short, Headspace is meditation made simple. It teaches you life-changing skills in just a few minutes a day. Headspace does more than just guided meditations though. It also helps people who have trouble sleeping relax with their guided sessions and Sleepcasts, which are 45-55 minutes and features audio tours of fiction realms paired with white noise. The app also dives into the moving sector of life, piling together a myriad of low-to-medium impact workouts that are 10-30 minutes long and focus on the mind-body connection. Headspace also offers curated music and meditation playlists designed to help you focus on the work in front of you. Make it fun, add your family or friends and make an accountability game out of it to help you build the routine of meditation.
Spotify
Another way I keep focus on the work in front of me is with Spotify. Whether it be by listening to the latest podcast from Tim Ferris, Snack Daily, or How I Built This, to lo-fi hip hop/jazz music or one of my many other favorites curated playlists. Spotify is good to just throw your headphones on and get lost in your work and undistracted from the outside world around you. Even the most simple of sounds like white noise is been proven to boost productivity by significant amounts. So if you’re stuck in the office or working from your hotel room all day, Spotify is perfect for trying one of their white noise playlists and accomplishing more along the way to your “perfect” day.
Grammarly
For someone that’s constantly typing in front of their computer like myself, Grammarly is a life-saver and productivity secret weapon. It helps me not look like a dufus, at least grammar-wise in email, Slack, or Google Docs. Grammarly is a free writing app that makes your writing clear and effective. Consider it as your proofreading tool, checking for grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. With Premium, you can also receive clarity-focused sentence suggestions, tone adjustments, word choice suggestions, formality level suggestions, fluency suggestions, and other advanced suggestions features. As a free customer myself, I’ve found that the free suffices just perfect for someone like me that keeps writing to a minimum. But I might consider it as I’m also someone that is looking to up the amount of blogging I do.
Cloudways
My hosting provider of choice is Cloudways, and for good reason. What you get in return for such a cheap subscription is unmatched. For someone like myself who builds websites for a living, I’m constantly having to install new WordPress instances into the server for clients. And Cloudways has made that process a lot quicker for me. It doesn’t go with some flaws, but what doesn’t honestly? It does tend to have hit-or-miss customer support. Just seems like depending on the day you catch them is like the flip of a coin, you never know what you’re going to get. But luckily for me (*knocks on wood*), I rarely need to interact with customer support. I would say in the last 3 years of being a customer I’ve probably interacted with them 4-5 times.
They make installing a new Cloud droplet simple and managing all the server droplets you have created in one centralized location and for a very affordable cost.
Zapier
As this overwhelming blog comes to a near close, you’re probably wondering how to keep this new toolbox of apps/software connected so that you’re not overwhelmed managing them all daily. Well, that’s where Zapier comes into play. This game-changing software syncs every software known to man together when they don’t already have a pre-existing API connection. For instance, when you receive a signed proposal or move a task in ClickUp it will automatically notify your invoicing software, like Wave to initiate the invoice to the customer, then upon receipt of payment, it will automatically move the ClickUp task to complete all without me ever having to touch it. Sounds amazing right? Trust me it is! It’s even better when you get it to do some of the more advanced trigger features it’s capable of performing. Zapier is something to take a look at for assisting in simplifying your everyday business life.
LastPass
As I bring this article to a close, you’re probably thinking how the hell do you manage all of your passwords for the accounts above? Easy, Lastpass! It’s a lifesaving tool, to say the least. You never know when you’re going to need to look up a password or account information on the fly. I can’t tell you how many times LastPass has saved my life from a world of headaches in the past. It will even securely store important information like bank cards or bank routing numbers. Trust me when I say this, get yourself a password manager. LP might not be the best option for you, since they recently switched to a new pricing model and no longer offer a free model on more than 1-active device. Either way, grab yourself a password manager if LP isn’t the right fit for you, you’ll thank me later.
Bullet Journal
Last but not least, it can’t go without saying, a bullet journal! How handy one of these can be when you’re trying to plan your next day, jot down some random notes, or just brainstorm without the distractions of incoming notifications from your phone or computer. I prefer a bulleted journal so I can turn each page into what I’m needed for that given moment. I love carrying one of these on me to just sketch random ideas and the bullets make for an easier way to lay that out quicker. I like to get one with a pouch in the back so I can slip inside a protractor or 6” ruler, I don’t know I just love straight lines vs sloppy ones, must be the designer in me coming out, who knows. Either way, I advise grabbing yourself a journal of some sort and jotting away, you’ll be surprised how much you remember from just randomly writing it down or reviewing your journal at the end of the week, month, or year.
There are no real right or wrong tools you can put into your toolbox, at the end of the day they’re all preferences. You just have to find what works for you and stick with it, not permanently but until it’s broken don’t fix it. There’s always the next best thing to simplify your life but unless you’re going to subconsciously implement it into your daily regimen you’re most likely going to waste time and money on the next shiny object. These are just a list of tools, that after testing and implementing over the past 12 years I have found to work well for me and my processes.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and whether or not you found any benefit from this article in the comments below. Let me know if you have any suggestions for new tools to integrate into my stack after reading this, I’m also a sucker for testing out some new tools.